skyscraper farms for crops and pigs
January 17, 2008the idea of farms contained within skyscrapers aren’t new - in fact, a number of proposals have been floated in recent years: for new york city, las vegas, even toronto. mvrdv proposed a “pig city”. there’s an underground farm housed in a former bank vault underneath tokyo.
i wonder if the idea of a vertical farm is even economically feasible, given that there would need to be artificial sunlight in the buildings, watering pumped up tens of stories, the expenses for transportation and delivery of the crops, fertilizer, and soil, and the high cost of land in the city.
wouldn’t urban agriculture on existing rooftops, open areas in the city, be a much more feasible method to increase urban agriculture?
a few recent designs for farming towers:
1. gordon graff, theatre district, toronto
2. pierre sartoux of atelier soa architectes, the living tower, paris
3. Chris Jacobs’ Vertical Farm, Las Vegas
Las Vegas will be the first city to built a vertical farm, a $200million 30-storey project designed to feed 72,000 people/year. sounds a bit overly ambitious to me!
5. underground farm, tokyo’s otemachi district
nice one!
An easier and quicker way to jump start commercial urban farming is via SPIN-Farming. SPIN stands for S-mall P-lot IN-tensive, and it is a non-technical, easy to-learn-and inexpensive-to-implement farming system that makes it possible to generate significant income from land under an acre in size. Minimal infrastructure, reliance on hand labor to accomplish most farming tasks, utilization of existing water sources to meet irrigation needs, and situating close to markets all keep investment and overhead costs low. SPIN therefore removes the 2 big barriers to entry – land and capital. You can see the operations of backyard, front lawn and neighborhood lot farmers at the SPIN-Farming web site - http://www.spinfarming.com.
does spin help with providing the infrastructure to help urban farmers sell their crops? through farmers markets for example?
Interesting, I wonder if buildings like taht would help cut down smog…or would the crops even live in foul air conditions
I am blown away–I mean blown away–by the planning and design characteristics of urban farming proposals. They are often rich, beautiful and empowering. That said, all of the vacant urban land in America, every bit of it, adds up to less than 1% of the agricultural land of the State of Delaware. Anybody who says–who even implies–that urban agriculture is a marketable alternative to other environmental restructuring of cities, or to rural agriculture for that matter, doesn’t know their head from their ass. That said, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep doing it. Just keep things in perspective.